Fotochema

In 1919, the Inženýři Bárta a Schier, továrna chemické produkty, spol. s.r.o. company was founded in Prague. It produced photographic materials under the brand IBIS. Evžen Schier then decided to relocate the factory to the village of Plotiště nad Labem, at that time under the name Fotochema. His intention was to build a modern factory for photographic materials, which later became a major producer of photographic plates, photo papers, roll films, and cine films. Fotochema exported its goods under the name Foma not only to the Western, Southern and Eastern Europe, but also overseas. Customers included amateur and professional photographers, and the Czechoslovak army.
 

The first pair of buildings of the Fotochema company, No. 281 (today No. 1602) and No. 282 (today No. 1603), were designed by the Brno architect and contractor Bedřich Koráb and built in Plotiště in 1920–1921.
 

The first of the two buildings, the residential and administrative house No. 281, is a brick building with a full basement and a one-storey building with a tent roof. The building has a rectangular ground plan, with two bays protruding from the mass of the building on the southern and western sides of the building towards the factory courtyard, while the southern one on the first floor turns into a terrace. The house was lit by a number of four-part and two-part wooden windows, and the façade was decorated with a number of cornices headed by a crown cornice and semi-columns. On the sides of the house towards the street, two more bays protruded from the mass, forming a terrace on the first floor. The main entrance to the house was located on the west side in the staircase bay. Two residential units were designed on the ground floor. Each apartment had an entrance hall, a room for the office, a kitchen, a pantry, a toilet, a bathroom, and three living rooms. On the first floor, there was one spacious apartment, which also had three living rooms with a veranda and two terraces. There were two living rooms in the attic.
 

The building with production premises No. 282 was conceived as a one-storey brick building with a dominant feature in the form of a water tower, with a staircase on the lower floors. The façade was articulated by semi-columns and was made in a combination of dark and light plastered surfaces. The halls were lit by metal factory windows. On the ground floor there was the caretaker’s apartment, as well as the production premises, including shipping and storage, a room for the boiler, filtration, storage, and cold storage. On the first floor, there were changing rooms, an office, a sorting room, a packing room, and laboratories. In the 1930s, the ground floor of the building was extended by a longitudinal extension.
 

In 1931, a new factory building was built on the west side of the complex. The building was designed by the Hradec Králové architect and contractor Ing. Stanislav Novotný. It was a single-storey building, while the façade was conceived in the same way as the façade of the existing factory building No. 282. A bay protruded from the central part of the building, which was connected to a porch with the main entrance to the hall. There were coating machines for films. In September 1937, Fotochema applied for permission to add a photographic plate, film and chemical factory to the existing factory building from 1931. The construction was designed and carried out by Stanislav Novotný. This led to the expansion of the production premises not only by film storage rooms, a cutting shop, and a paper sorting room, but also by premises for the company’s employees, as the extension enabled the creation of a dining room, cloakroom and offices. In 1944–1946, additional storage spaces were added to the west side of the building.
 

During WWII, Fotochema submitted to German central planning and became part of the Association for Chemical and Metallurgical Production. After the liberation, the company was placed under national administration and nationalized in 1948, and the company’s founder, Ing. Evžen Schier, was fired. This is how the company Fotochema, n. p. was established., under which all the companies engaged in the production of photographic supplies were incorporated into the company. After nationalization, and especially in the years 1966–1972, a number of new production spaces were built on the factory premises, such as a new company administrative building, high-rise building No. 1737. At that time, there were also a number of extensions to the existing factory buildings and their insensitive adaptation to the needs of modernized and expanding production. The articulated façade of building No. 282, as well as other factory buildings, was replaced by uniform plaster and the windows were replaced with newer ones. Building No. 281 was also severely affected, the original façade was replaced by a new one, with which all decorative elements on the façade disappeared, the original casement windows were replaced and a new entrance to the house was pierced from the side of today’s U Fotochemy Street. In recent years, most of the windows in the factory have been replaced with plastic ones, which do not respect the division of the original window partitions. In 1995, the company was privatized and FOMA BOHEMIA. s.r.o. was established., which still manages most of the original company premises and continues to produce black and white photographic films and photo papers.
 

KK